Prologue
The rustling of their feet in the leaves was all she could hear, on another occasion she would be enjoying her stay, enjoying the nature and it calmness, all that she loved about being in the woods, but it was the same every year and she was already confused enough with your predicament, everything for her just had to be more difficult than for the normal person, as if the fates would have looked right at you and decided: yeah, this one.
Keeping up her pace she could feel the presence of him drawing closer, but she was faster, she had to be, it brought her memories of her first year doing this again, oh how naïve and unprepared she had been when this all started, but well, she supposed it started when she was born, just like with the others.
But again, she had an especially hard case in counts of what maybe the fates wanted of her, maybe she was thinking of herself as special in a way, but big shot was she not, just needing to learn how to defend herself since forever, and since she was left at a young age all alone it was truly a wonder that she made it so far alive.
It was one of the things she could be thankful about, even if life would seem to always find a way to bite her in the back, she refused to just let down and die like that, she had other people to care about now, a propose even, and that gave her a boost.
Right foot, left foot, making her best effort to miss him off her trail, she knew that running away was not the most honorable thing to do, but at the moment he had company, and it was just not a good idea to throw herself blind into a battle she was sure she was going to lose.
She didn’t want to even think about what would happen if he got wind of her, even by a single hair straw, the gods knew what he was capable of, but the gods didn’t really care, that was one of the first things that she learned when she found herself looking for a safe space, a place for people like her, it was always a streak of luck that were not meant to her that she was able to find herself in a place where she could be safe. Away from him.
The forest got denser the more she ran into it, more and more trees started to show up, making it rather difficult for her to maneuver, but it helped that even tired, she was still in peak condition to be able to cover most of her tracks, at least this would buy her some time, and more time would mean that she could actually think in a way to escape, better than doing things in a hurry, but sometimes people just didn’t have the luxury of having more than time to react.
Pausing for a moment, she focused in a particularly tall tree, deciding to climb faster after making a fake pathway that you could have escaped from and wait out till they were gone, not really creative but a plan none the less. Climbing was came up easily to her, even at her other home she would constantly do it in the big oak tree that they had in the years, she and the others would bet on who was the fastest, it was no surprise that she would win most of the time.
She could almost smile at the sweet memory if it wasn’t the noise she heard downwards, making herself as little as she could and the best hidden in the middle of the leaves she dared to look down.
Yup, they were there, it seemed that this time he chose to use trolls to hunt her, that was a new one, she didn’t think he would need the help, or that he would still be so fixated on you after some time, finding a new distraction, but this one happened to be stubborn, much to your lack of luck.
The trolls were huge, in a grayish skin tone that was more alike rocks than anything else, they were looking around to your sudden vanishment, one took the traces that she had left, but they seemed to come up with the plan of dividing themselves to cover more space, two following your mock up path and the other going in the opposite direction, she waited a while but apparently he wasn’t with them.
That left her with some options: she could go after the path of the first troll, one alone was more than capable of taking down so there was not much need to worry; or she could go backwards, the only problem being that if she went backwards maybe he was going to be there, waiting for her, she didn’t want to take that risk; and the last option was to go following a different path all together.
She left off a breath she was holding for a while and made her way down the tree, making sure not to make much noise, besides the normal noises of the woods, she really didn’t need a fight that was just going to make even more of a noise and probably grab attention, going back was the worst option, so the safest option was just to make her way into the woods and hopefully find safety.
It wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t her first time doing something like this, and as long as she kept her senses up it would be like a walk in the park. With a newfound disposition she went her way, taking off a small compass off her pocket, she put up the hoodie of her brown cloak up and made her way towards the east while bringing up a stick she had being carrying along before throwing it up in the air, in a spinning motion and grabbing it again, only for it to turn into a sword.
Appeased with the results she went to make a small mark in the nearest tree, nothing too obvious that would make her give away her position, but also nothing too small that she could not discern as something of her own creation, just to avoid getting lost.
She followed up the path of the unknown trying to find little clues to if she was close to her place or not, a river would have been a god given to where she needed to go, after all the places that she was the most safe were always perfect places, as one would say, they just had everything at one place and would make any geologist doubt their existence profusely, but she knew it was real. Hard for a normal person to find but real.
Making another mark on another tree once she was far away enough she starred upwards, the sun was still shining strong, but with so much vegetation it was getting darker by the second as she went inwards, gloomier even.
That… That was the part were it was starting to get to her, the place felt weird for some reason, she more she walked the more a sensation of uneasiness was made in the pits of her stomach, she made sure to double take her backside more often than not, the sensation of being watched was strong within her, but this time not by the two eyes she was already afraid, but by millions of eyes all at once, she tried to shake off the feeling, trying to tell herself that her nerves were getting to her, but none could shake it.
Grabbing her sword, a little tighter she was already ready for anything that was going to be in her direction … And yet nothing ever came.
Upon what seemed to more hours waking she was starting to think that she was lost, and the possibility was pretty high she would admit to herself, but also the place was changing ever so slightly, more sounds came by, sounds that she wasn’t used to in the woods.
That’s when she saw, in the distance, it was like the top of something? She couldn’t make it up just yet, but it was huge if she could see from there, it was like the top of a palace or something, it was weird to see it so close to the woods, but it only did confirm that: yes, she was lost and probably went in the wrong direction somewhere and ended up in the other side or closer to civilization than she was thinking by.
The good thing was that his presence was not by there anymore.
That didn’t mean she let her sword go just yet, the eyes, she could still feel them.
The she saw it.
Or better they.
Millions upon millions of tiny eyes looking directly at her, at her sword that seemed now, oh so small in comparation to them, they looked from her feet to the top of her head, they didn’t had much of a expression but she didn’t need an expression to know that she was in their territory, and there she was the pray.
Spiders. Two giant spiders in the most literal sense of the word, they were bigger than a cabin, and quite larger as well, hairy with thin legs that were in perfect stillness. She gripped her sword, trying to swallow down the fear, she had faced monsters before, everybody in her place had faced monsters, but these ones just HAD to be spiders uh?
It was dead quiet for a moment, none of them making any movement, but neither were you, the only movement in your side was your eyes looking for any traps, any spiderwebs, anything that could happen for them to have the upper hand in combat.
“Who are you?” A voice startled you, it was deep and resounding, almost like it was simply just an echo and nothing more, for a moment you wondered if Echo was actually here, but again, she tended to be everywhere, but she was cursed so that made no sense-
“I shall not ask you again, invader, for granted I do not care whose blood you are”
Slowly she blinked, and blinked again for good measure, was the monster actually… She took a glace backwards for half a second before turning to the monster… The apparently sentient monster.
“My name is Y/N Y/L/N, daughter of-”
“I do not care whose blood you are” It cut her off in the middle of her introduction, but she could not be mad, not when two monsters were actually having a conversation with her like it was nothing outside the norm. She bit her lower lip, she didn’t remember nobody ever talking about those, not in classes not ever.
“I will be very fair to you, in the name of a newfound friendship I do have, but in my nursery you will not stay”
“Nursery?” She looked around for a moment, trying to find anything that could link this place to a nursery, she didn’t know much about spiders, much less monster spiders but an open forest like this would not be a good place to store anything.
“Yes” the anger now was palpable in the tone of voice of the monster, you didn’t have to think twice before your body was already reacting, feeling again in the opposite direction of whatever that was.
Thoughts running wild within her head. It was true that many monsters habituated the woods, especially if they could feel the divine close, but you never saw a sentient monster that wasn’t at least a little bit human, the only spider you could think about was with Athena but again, it wasn’t very alike for that to had happened, and there were two of them!
This time Y/N didn’t bother covering her trail, or minding how loud her footsteps happened to be, this time panic of all sorts were blooming every second she spend in this forest, she just knew she needed to find a way out, she needed to get out before she actually went crazy.
After what seemed to be an eternity, to what she knew would be much more than a far number of minutes, she saw light becoming brighter and brighter. An exit!
Giving all of her strength almost didn’t seem like it was enough, but she just knew that she had to get out.
And finally!
She almost gave out and fell to her knees, breathing heavily she didn’t process much of where she was, air was burning in her lungs, her body seemed to be hot from all the running, in contrast to the cold air she could feel surrounding her.
That was when she looked forward.
What the-
Y/N almost choke, it was a huge castle, she could not recognize the architecture, but it was nothing like she had ever seem before, it was somewhat eerie but it was beautiful, and quite old as the stones made it out to be, it seemed imponent, and she wondered how she didn’t noticed it before, blaming it on the remaining of the adrenaline fuel she was still able to feel in her veins but that didn’t came to be the case now.
Now all that was on her mind was that she was NOT in her way to the camp place, she was NOT in a safe space, she was NOT in a place she knew if she wanted to be or not.
She had no idea where she was.